Sunday

Sports-on-TV wars continue

Things are getting real real in the sports media world.
News Corp., which I reported on Monday was buying a large stake in the New York Yankees' News Corp., has its sights set bigger: It will develop a network to rival ESPN, according to Bloomberg. From the story:
With a national network, Fox would join Comcast Corp.'s NBC Sports Network and CBS Corp.'s CBS Sports Network in taking on the dominant ESPN. News Corp. last year secured rights to the Pac-12 Conference and Big-12 Conference games and owns 20 regional sports networks. The company in October won TV rights to soccer's World Cup in 2018 and 2022.
“The success of all these networks will depend on the quality of their sports rights,” David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, said. “There's been a lot of competition for those rights and that's driven up costs.”

More Big Ten addition talk

A longtime reader, Matt Halko, pointed out something in reply to yesterday's post about Nate Silver and his thoughts on the Big Ten's addition of Maryland and Rutgers: Silver, the New York Times stat guru, argues that those two schools don't bring as many eyeballs as once thought, as they don't penetrate their markets as well as other teams.
But, as Matt pointed out, who cares? This deal is all about money. And so even if thousands of people in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., don't watch the Big Ten or care about Maryland or Rutgers, the Big Ten still will get its money because of subscriber fees imposed by cable distributors. Now, if the Big Ten can't reach agreement with those cable companies in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, that's one thing. But here's betting it gets done eventually.
Also, as my colleague Scott Suttell points out: This move is great for also-rans like Northwestern — his alma mater — because Maryland and Rutgers currently stink. Go Wildcats!

Giving thanks!

I've tried this before with little lasting success: The teams in town do not get enough credit for the work in the community they do; of course, you say, they should, given their resources and their players' salaries. But it's still nice, especially around the holidays.
So, a recap:

The Cleveland Browns, including Joe Haden and T.J. Ward, carved turkeys at St. Augustine Church in Tremont; speaking of admirable causes, St. Augustine serves a ton of free meals throughout the years, and should be commended.

The Cleveland Cavaliers' Tristan Thompson and Omri Casspi have been out and about this week as part of the holiday celebration, and the Cavs honored military at Saturday's game.